Austin Meek: Mike White's departure reverberates at Oregon

Austin Meek @austinmeekRG

Tuesday

Jun 26, 2018 at 3:45 PMJun 26, 2018 at 4:26 PM

Outside of Eugene, a softball coach leaving for another job isn’t likely to make much of a ripple.

Here in Oregon’s little ecosystem, though, it hit like a rock in the middle of the pond. The Ducks had a great thing going in softball: new stadium, passionate fan base, perennial national title contender. Mike White was considered the man who made it all happen, and Oregon let him walk.

News that White was leaving for Texas reverberated in Oregon’s coaching community. He was one of the school’s brightest stars, even if he didn’t coach the most visible sport. His success here — five conference titles and five trips to the Women’s College World Series in nine years — put him at the peak of his profession.

Not only did Oregon lose him to another school, but apparently the Ducks didn’t fight that hard to retain him.

If Oregon could let a coach like that get away, who else is expendable? That was the question I was hearing Monday.

The Duck have a bunch of coaches who could end up on someone else’s wish list: Robert Johnson, Kelly Graves, Dana Altman, Casey Martin and others. White’s departure, and Oregon’s hesitation to renegotiate his contract, raises questions about the school’s commitment to rewarding success.

Like most athletic directors, Rob Mullens has his fans and his detractors. His supporters would say he’s brought steady leadership to a department coming off a series of scandals, overseen an era of unprecedented success and kept Oregon’s finances in good order.

The detractors would point out that Mullens’ record with coaches is hit-and-miss. Graves looks like a home run in women’s basketball, and Johnson has taken Oregon’s track programs to new heights. But in football, Mullens fired Mark Helfrich two years after giving him a big extension, then watched Willie Taggart bail on the job after one year.

I’m not sure where the softball coach fits into that equation. It’s a bad look, though, to hand out big raises to the entire football staff after a 7-6 season, then allow your championship-contending softball coach to walk away over a few hundred thousand dollars.

Oregon gave White a raise three years ago, upping his average annual salary to $237,000. At the time, the Ducks were coming off back-to-back seasons of being swept in the WCWS and White was a candidate for the head coaching job at Arkansas.

Oregon might argue that not much has changed since then. The Ducks are still a national contender, and they still haven’t found the formula for winning in Oklahoma City. If anything, their reputation for underachieving in the WCWS has become more entrenched. In Oregon’s eyes, perhaps, there wasn’t a compelling reason to re-do the contract.

Except there was. It was Texas. Oregon thought White was trying to leverage the Texas job for more money and called his bluff. Now White is wearing burnt orange and the Ducks are looking for a new coach.

Did Oregon just miscalculate, or is this a sign that the Ducks have stretched their budget as far as it can go? That’s a question that bears watching.

We know this: The Pac-12 isn’t generating revenue on par with its power conference peers. According to Jon Wilner of The San Jose Mercury News, the Pac-12’s annual distribution is $5.5 million less than the ACC’s, $8.5 million less than the SEC’s and a whopping $17.5 million less than the Big Ten’s.

Now look at the standings in the Director’s Cup, which measures overall performance across all Division I sports. The top three schools for 2017-18 are all from the Pac-12, with Oregon at No. 23.

Do you see the problem?

The Pac-12 invests more in nonrevenue sports than any other conference in the country. It also generates the smallest revenue share of any major conference. Something has to give.

It makes you wonder if the days of Oregon being good at everything are numbered. What happens, for example, when Oregon has to choose between paying a football assistant and paying the softball coach? In the past, the Ducks could do both. Now I’m not so sure.

Losing a softball coach to a higher bidder isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to make a big splash outside of Eugene. But if you know Oregon, you realize White’s departure is going to reverberate for a long time.